Californian dam fears spark evacuation

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Nearly 200,000 residents of areas downstream from California’s Oroville dam had to be evacuated amid fears that a damaged spillway would fail and release uncontrolled floodwaters.

The 234m tall dam, the highest in the US, is sited about 150 miles northeast of San Francisco, and holds back one of California’s largest man-made lakes. Heavy rains began to top the dam’s emergency spillway, causing serious erosion.

California’s Department of Water Resources used helicopters to drop rocks in an attempt to fill the gouge, and the volume of water being released from the dam was doubled to drain the lake.

It later emerged that environmentalists had voiced concerns about the dam in 2005. A policy director of pressure group Friends of the River, Ron Stork, told CNN: ‘We urged them to put concrete on the spillway. Our argument was that without a proper spillway, the hillside would wash away and cause catastrophic flooding.’

Department officials told a news conference that they were not aware of the report.

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  • USA, water resources, California, Oroville dam